Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Big Oil got its licks in Tuesday. It hammered President Obama for his moratorium on deepwater off-shore drilling as if they couldn't wait one lousy day for a judge to decide. A BP house organ concluded the 60,000 barrels of oil from its blowout well since April 20 was "good for business" in the affected Gulf states.

What else would one expect from an industry acting like Marie Antoinette telling French peasants to eat cake if they didn't appreciate the king's regime.

What galls me about the moratorium whining is that a federal judge in New Orleans is poised tomorrow to rule on that issue brought about by the industry.

But, no, oil titans couldn't resist the temptation to vent their anger at the World National Oil Companies Congress meeting in London Tuesday.

Transocean Ltd. president and CEO Steven Newman said

"There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit."

Transocean owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and killed 11 crew, resulting in the worst accidental environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Judge Martin Feldman has said he will decide by tomorrow whether to overturn the six-month ban. An industry attorney argued Monday that the six-month suspension of drilling work could prove more economically devastating than the spill itself.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," the attorney testified.

At the London talks, heckled by protesters, Chevron global vice president for business development Jay Pryor said the drilling moratorium would "constrain supplies for world energy."

"It would also be a step back for energy security," said Pryor.

Fact: American off-shore oil drilling produces only 2% of the world market supply.

BP, which leased the platform, says it has paid out $2 billion to try to unsuccessfully cap the blowout and pay damage claims to affected fishermen, businesses and state and local governments. Last week it agreed to an Obama administration request to establish a $20 billion escrow fund and turn its disbursements over to a government-appointed administer.

About My View

Welcome: An intelligent and articulate discussion is desired in these days of partisan politics. These postings are commentary on national politics, current events, sports and any other stuff that generates civil conversation. My career in the newspaper business extends more than 25 years at the Klamath Falls Hearld & News, Tustin News, Orange Daily News, Santa Ana Register and San Diego Evening Tribune. Son of a vegetable farmer, I was raised in the predominately Mexican village of San Juan Capistrano. At age 11, my family moved to the nearby coastal city of Laguna Beach where body surfing became my favorite sport. I attended the private Webb School of California near Pomona. I graduated majoring in political science at the University of California at Davis. After my newspaper career, I became a landscape contractor in San Diego for 10 years and then groundskeeper for a RV resort on the bank of the Rogue River seven miles east of Gold Beach, Ore. I resumed my writing career, first with emails, and later launching this blogsite in 2007.